Adorno treats the capacity to abstract as historically acquired, not innate.

Evidence

Adorno defines the ability to abstract not as an anthropological invariant, but rather as something acquired – as something which has developed over the course of human history. Human beings, he claims, had to endure a ‘very painstaking and lengthy journey’ in order to ‘first lean to abstract, that is, to emancipate themselves from external nature. Abstraction is only possible at a certain state of history: “As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all”’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1447

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s Grundrisse claim about abstraction arising in the richest concrete development, and to the broader debate on whether critique of political economy depends on a transhistorical ‘abstract’ subject. — connects to: The Freudian unconscious may be a historically contingent artifact, not a timeless structure — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 406

Broader Connections

• The Freudian unconscious may be a historically contingent artifact, not a timeless structure #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 406